


Mothers and Others

by Minutia_R



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Time Period: Vorkosigan Regency
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-25 13:05:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3811627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minutia_R/pseuds/Minutia_R
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gregor is growing up, and Drou is contemplating motherhood.  But when a tea party with Cordelia and the Hassadar Students' League turns unexpectedly violent, Drou has to examine her feelings both for Gregor and for the children she may have in the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mothers and Others

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zimra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zimra/gifts).



> This did grow out of your prompts, but it took a somewhat different direction. I hope you like it.

Gregor was asleep. He was far too big (in his own opinion) to be read a story and tucked into bed anymore, but he'd agreed to an episode of Stasya and her Horses, because Miles had insisted (and then fallen asleep himself halfway through; Bothari had carried him back to his bedroom, an easier task with a sleeping Miles than one excitedly recreating how Yelena had tricked her mean auntie and ridden in the parade), and he'd agreed to have his bedroom checked for Cetagandan genetically-engineered monsters, because he knew Drou worried.

Drou only hoped she wasn't giving him more paranoias than he needed--but Cordelia, out of her endless child-rearing manuals, had decided that bedtime rituals were important, and Gregor did seem to sleep easier for them. And it was true that Drou worried. And monsters under the bed were easier to check for than disaffected Counts in the Council, or hidden time-bombs in Gregor's own genes.

Gregor's bedroom door clicked shut behind her--but that wasn't Agnessa's step in the hallway with the tea things. Before the thought made it all the way to Drou's conscious mind, she was pressed flat against the wall, her stunner out--

It was Cordelia. With the tea things. She wasn't that much heavier than Agnessa, but she had never learned the glide of a palace-trained servant.

"Don't do that," Drou gritted out. She breathed in deeply and breathed out slowly, but her heart was still racing. Cordelia, damn her, was giggling, the tea sloshing all over the tray and soaking the cake.

"I am sorry, really," said Cordelia between gasps. She finally managed to set the tray down on the sitting room's small table without spilling or breaking anything else, and collapsed into a chair. "It's just--things have been so hectic recently, and I've hardly seen you, so when I saw one of the servants coming by with your tea, I just had to make my own opportunity."

"Save me from tacticians," Drou sighed. She lowered herself onto the sofa; now that the brief adrenaline surge was wearing off she felt each of the day’s little pains stronger than ever, in her shoulders, in her knees. But it was good to see Cordelia. "I've missed you, too. But next time, announce yourself."

"No fear." Cordelia picked up a slice of soggy babka, examined it dubiously, then shrugged and took a bite. "I don't need a stunner headache on top of all my other ones." She rubbed her temples. "It's this Hassadar Students' League tea--Celine set it up months ago, and she's the only social secretary I've been able to keep for more than a few days. And now it's come out that the fellow who pulled that spectacularly incompetent assassination attempt on Count Vorville was involved with the Student's League, but of course there's been no evidence that they had anything to do with the bombing, and the tickets to the tea have been selling like hotcakes. Simon's having kittens, and Celine is threatening to emmigrate to Sergyar and take her chances with the worms. God, Drou, I thought I'd just be having a nice quiet chat with the leaders of a students' union about improving access to information in rural areas."

Cordelia's Betan accent, always pronounced, got even stronger when she was doing her clueless-galactic act. She flattened the vowel in Drou's name, and made it longer as if to compensate: _Dreeeeew._ "I guess Captain Illyan would rather you cancelled?" said Drou.

"He's resigned to me," said Cordelia. "How's Gregor's schoolwork going? I haven't had a chance to do more than glance at it, but he seems to be getting the hang of algebra."

There was a little more conversation on subjects of mutual interest, and then Agnessa did show up and clear away the tea things. Cordelia went off to her rooms, muttering about Barrayarans and security headaches, and one of the young ImpSec men came to relieve Drou for the night.

Kou still wasn't home by the time Drou got there, and she wasn't sure how much later it was when he finally came to bed, with a futile attempt not to wake her. She woke up, but she didn't startle; awake or asleep, Kou's movements were unmistakable.

"Sorry," he said. "Go back to sleep."

Drou propped herself up on one elbow instead, and put on the soft bedside light. "You look awful."

"Not as young as I used to be." He smiled perfunctorily, hurt behind the humor. Something was bothering him more than the usual overwork, whatever he might say. "I don't know how Aral still manages twenty meetings a day at his age, but I can't keep up with him anymore."

"And . . .?" said Drou.

Kou winced and shook his head. "Nothing. The usual. They said it when Aral was coming off his lunch break with Miles, though, and I think he heard. Not Aral, they wouldn't dare, but people think that Miles doesn't understand--"

"He understands. But what did they say, Kou?"

"Oh--we've been married for three years and no kids, I probably can't get it up." Kou slumped back against the pillows. "That one's not so bad. But the other guy said, no, probably my wife went and had herself fitted for one of those implants, so I couldn't get any muties on her--"

His hands clenched in the blankets, and his shoulder twitched involuntarily. "That's vile," said Drou. "Who said it?"

"You'd challenge him to a duel, wouldn't you?" Kou smiled and touched his fingers to her cheek. "And then Aral would have to cut off your head. Let it go. I know how important your work is--without it, the rest of ours' would go up in flames soon enough."

Drou snuggled into his side. "Gregor's growing up. In a couple of years he'll go off to school, and ImpSec and maybe some Vorbarra armsmen will go with him, and I won't. I'll be out of a job."

Kou blinked as if this was a new idea to him. "I'm sure Cordelia could find a place for you on her staff."

"I'm sure she would," Drou agreed. "But that's not what I meant. I spend all my time around kids these days, and sometimes I think I would like one of my own. Of ours. But then . . . when we first . . . and I thought I was pregnant . . . most of the things I was afraid of then haven't gone away, just because we're married now."

"Well," said Kou, hesitantly, feeling his way. "The government's more stable now."

"True," said Drou with a laugh, as humorless as Kou's smile earlier. "But you never know. You were there, when Ivan was born. I could never go through what Alys went through. Or what Cordelia went through with Miles, or Kareen with Gregor . . ." She was holding too tight, her nails leaving lines as red as Kou's surgery scars. She had to make an effort to relax, to breathe. "I couldn't."

"You've done some amazing things. You probably could. But you shouldn't have to. I certainly wouldn't ask you to, just to prove--" he made a disgusted noise. "What sort of name have I got to offer a son, anyway? He’d be a grocer’s grandson, and the son of a cripple who’d gotten himself jumped-up above his station, and no one’d ever let him forget it.”

“Kou, love. You were going to let it go, remember?”

Kou sighed and put an arm around Drou, tucking up against her. “You’re right. And you’re not having your implant taken out tonight, either way.”

“No,” said Drou. She dimmed the light again, satisfied with what she saw. “But it never hurts to stay in practice.”

#

Not very long after that, about a tenth of Vorbarr Sultana had taken to their beds with fevers, vomiting, and painfully swollen joints. A frantic investigation had determined that it wasn't a Cetagandan bio-weapon--just a natural bug brought back from Vervain by a couple of hapless businessmen--but Simon Illyan, sleepless and beginning to look a bit green around the gills, had made no objection when Cordelia took Miles and Bothari and Gregor and Drou with her when she left for Hassadar.

"A functioning public health system would have stopped this before it got started," was Cordelia's opinion. She sat across the back compartment of the lightflyer from Drou, and was clearly bored of the security reports she had been reading. Drou, who had read them already, didn't blame her. Fast-penta interview transcripts tended to be dull and meandering, and the most interesting thing in these was petty academic infighting, and the information that one of the student leaders had apparently had a fling with Cam Lejeune, the Vorville Bomber, before he blew himself up. When asked whether she had still been his girlfriend at the time of the assassination attempt, her response had been transcribed as *hysterical laughter*; it was a few minutes before the interviewer had been able to elicit a "no."

Miles was plastered against the window, asking about every hilltop that flashed past and gorge they flew through. Bothari was doing his best to answer, with stories from Yuri’s War and even earlier that he’d picked up in his time with Count Piotr’s men--edited, with sidelong looks at Cordelia, to make guerilla warfare sound like an extended camping trip. He said nothing about his own experiences in the mountains during the Pretendership. Gregor had his head bent over a book-disk of folk-tales from Vorbretten’s District, which he was supposed to be taking a test on, but his lightpen had stopped moving and he looked a bit abstracted. Drou wondered how much of those days he remembered.

“At least the plague doesn’t seem to be too deadly,” said Drou. “And it’s nice to get a little vacation.”

The necessity of bringing Gregor along--Cordelia informed Drou when the boys were out of earshot--had also cut through Count Piotr’s objections to having Cordelia and Miles on his property. And using the Count’s official residence in Hassadar--a modern and easily secured building--to host the Students’ League tea had let Illyan breathe a little easier, metaphorically if not literally. They touched down on the manicured lawns in the early afternoon and found the catering staff already there, along with three boys and two girls from the Students’ League. (And when had university students started looking like children to Drou?) She managed to match faces to the the names she’d read in the reports--Artem Golubev, Danil Crane, Oscar Vorkelly, Paraskevi Petridis, Emilie Bonnet. Cordelia probably should have done a better job of hiding her look of enlightenment when Miss Bonnet introduced herself, but at least she didn’t blurt out _So you’re the Vorville Bomber’s ex!_

It seemed like backwoods fashions were de rigeur for students these days. Petridis had her hair up in braided loops, and Bonnet was wearing a loose, smock-like dress; even the boys were sporting embroidery on their shirts, as if the whole party had just come in from a long day emptying buckets of maple sap. It was clear none of them had ever met an emperor before, but Gregor got through the formal introductions with his usual grace, and Cordelia with no more than her usual impatience. Then Cordelia, the students and the caterers went up to the house, and Drou, Bothari and the boys escaped to explore the gardens, Gregor carrying Miles piggy-back and Miles reaching for everything in sight.

A little later, and considerably more rumpled, they came up to the kitchen to help themselves to some of the crepes with powdered sugar that the caterers had been making. Cordelia and the students were in the middle of a lively back-and-forth about anthropology, Students' Residence Committees, and the relative quality of various university coffee shops (Drou wasn’t sure that Cordelia had ever been to any of the coffee shops, but she put in an impassioned argument in favor of Enzo’s anyway). They barely noticed Drou and the boys’ intrusion--except for Emilie Bonnet, who broke off mid-sentence and glanced towards the door where they’d come in with an odd, avid look, before recovering the thread of her argument.

People stared at Miles, with his back brace and skinny frame with the too-large head. And people stared at Gregor. But there was something else--the loose smock, the hesitant way Bonnet moved, as if she weren’t quite used to the way her weight was balanced, the way Petridis hovered around and made sure that she had somewhere to put her feet and a full glass of water at her elbow. Drou’s opinion of the Vorville Bomber, never high, plunged to new depths as she realized that Emilie Bonnet was pregnant.

Drou wondered if Cordelia realized. But Cordelia would probably feel like she had to Do Something, and it wasn’t Drou’s business. She supervised the washing of hands and faces, and got the boys up to the suite they were staying in before the influx of hundreds of students thirsty for tea.

#

The boom didn’t shake the floor of their suite on the second floor of the Count’s Residence; it was a modern building, designed to withstand shocks of that sort. It was only Drou who felt like the world was shifting under her feet. Gregor went still for a moment, then kept brushing his teeth with studied calm. Bothari’s face lit up with that frightening adrenaline-high it sometimes got. Mlies’ mirrored it, eyes very wide, and he said, “Raiders! Like in Vorthalia!”

“It sounded like a controlled detonation,” said Drou, recovering herself. She tapped her comlink and said, “Report?”

“We found a device in one of the catering trucks,” the tinny voice of Lieutnenant Vormercier, from the ImpSec detail, answered. “It’s been dealt with. Stay where you are.”

Bothari opened the door of the suite, looked out into the hallway, then closed it again and keyed the lock. “These rooms are clean. Swept them while you were in the kitchen. It’s as safe as anywhere. Worst case, we can go down from the balcony.”

Drou nodded acknowledgement. “But where did Miles see Vorthalia?” she said.

Bothari looked embarrassed. “Lady Alys’. Ivan was watching it, and I didn’t want to tell Miles he couldn’t . . . Lady Vorkosigan said it was all right, afterwards.”

That made sense. Alys was stricter in some ways with Ivan than Cordelia was with Miles, but she had a broader idea of what constituted appropriate children’s entertainment.

Miles looked from Bothari to Drou, pouting. “No raiders?”

“Come on,” said Gregor, giving the bed Miles was lying on a bounce. “Brush your teeth, and we can watch the next Stasya. Droushie brought the vid-disk, didn’t you?”

Drou had, and Miles allowed himself to be mollified, and Gregor’s even spirits seemed less forced, and soon both boys were ensconced in Miles’ bed, the light of the vid flickering over their faces. Drou was still restless, and went out to the balcony, to see how it would be if they had to leave that way as Bothari had suggested, and whether she could get any more clue of what was going on. There was an unhappy mill of students on the lawn, and a handful of harried ImpSec men herding more out of the house.

In the other direction, the grounds were dark and empty, gravel paths dotted with rosebushes, a small garden shed off to one side. Her eye caught a flicker of movement, and she tapped her comlink. “Lieutnenant Vormercier? Is that your man by the garden shed?”

There was a burst of swearing that Drou took as a no. “It’s closer to us than you are,” said Drou. “Bothari will watch the Emperor and Lord Miles. I’m going in.”

Drou met Bothari’s eyes across the room; he nodded, and she was off. She dangled from the edge of the balcony from her fingertips, dropped to the ground, made for the garden shed at a run. As she got close, she smelled gas, and she flung the door of the shed open then stepped back. Emilie Bonnet lifted her tear-streaked face from where it was bent over Paraskevi Petridis’ prone form.

“It was Paraskevi,” she said between coughs. “She said she needed my help with something, and then she--”

Drou quickly examined the unconscious girl. Her breathing was ragged, but her heartbeat was steady, and she didn’t seem to have any other injuries; Drou took a chance and lifted her up, bringing her out into the fresh air. “I need a medic here,” she said into her comlink, both because she did and so that Bonnet would know that backup was coming. She’d be stupid to try anything now, but it wasn’t like she’d been particularly clever up until this point.

She followed Drou dismally, coughing, tears streaming. And maybe Petridis was guilty, and Bonnet innocent of anything but having poor taste in friends, but Drou didn’t think so. Not just because Bonnet’s hands were dark with chemical stains, and Petridis’ clean, or because Petridis had gotten a face full of improvised gas grenade and Bonnet had only got the edges of it. There was a sullen hunch to Bonnet’s shoulders, a defiant tone to her hysteria, like she was daring Drou to doubt her. The tears were real enough--Drou’s own eyes were smarting from her brief exposure--and the hysteria probably was, too. But Drou doubted everything else.

“Did you mean to make Miss Petridis look like another student radical blown up by her own bomb?” said Drou. “How did you think you’d get away with it? You’ve had fast-penta before.”

Bonnet’s chin came up in surprise, and she opened her mouth to speak, then shut it firmly.

“And you’ve beaten it before,” Drou realized. “That’s why. When you said you weren’t Cam Lejeune’s girlfriend anymore--that was true, but not complete, wasn’t it? Were you . . . his wife?”

Bonnet hugged her middle, gulped air, finally nodded. “No one knew but our seconds.” She nodded at Petridis, who was beginning to stir. “And if I was carrying his bastard,no one’d care, would they? Or they could call me a whore all they liked, but no one’d be able to take the baby away from me. And they would, his family. Paraskevi said she’d tell if I didn’t make it worth her while. It was little things she asked first, but I knew that wouldn’t last. I had to do something.”

"But why?" said Drou. She could see a couple of ImpSec men, and a medic, coming across the lawn towards them. "You'll go to prison now, and lose the baby anyway. And it might have been a girl."

Bonnet snorted. "Am I stupid? When you can get those pills for fifteen marks at any pharmacy? I didn't know what Cam was planning, but I knew I was losing him. And I thought he'd come back, if I gave him a son. And now . . . I've got nothing left."

#

It was another half-hour, and conversations with ImpSec, the municipal police, and the medic, who confirmed that Drou's brief exposure to the gas hadn't done her any lasting harm, before she could get back to the suite. Miles was sleeping, and Bothari sitting in a chair with a clear view of both boys' beds; he opened his hand towards Gregor, still wakeful, with a he's-all-yours gesture.

"Droushie!" Gregor's face was bright and his voice was clear; he looked, as he seldom did, no older than his eight years.

"Sorry about that," said Drou. "Just a little bomb scare. It wasn't even a real bomb." At least, the one in the catering truck hadn't been; it was a makeshift thing that Bonnet had apparently planted as a distraction. "The police have arrested the person who did it."

"Good," said Gregor doubtfully. He hung his head, and Drou couldn't see his face in the shadow. "Droushie, when you left, I thought . . . I remembered when Captain Negri took me away, and Mama was crying, and I never saw her again."

_I'll always come back_ wasn't something Drou could promise, and Gregor knew it. "That must have been scary. Do you remember that a lot?"

"Aral says when you remember somebody, it's like burning an offering for them, like making them alive again in your heart." Gregor made a little motion, halfway between a shrug and a shudder. "But I don't want Mama to be crying all the time."

Drou came and sat beside him on the bed. "Would you like a different memory? I could tell you the story of a little boy, his mother, and their bodyguard, and the time they went for a boat ride on the Kithera River.”

It had been a dry run for Drou, to see how she’d do in crowds and unfamiliar territory, and it had been a way to get Kareen and Gregor out of the palace when Prince Serg was in residence, which he had rarely been in those days, preferring to spend most of his time with his command. Gregor gave a hesitant half-smile. “I think . . . there were ducks? And ice cream?”

“Strawberry,” Drou confirmed. “You ate a whole cone by yourself.” And piece by piece, they remembered it together, until Gregor fell asleep.

#

“I hope Celine is already on a fast shuttle to Sergyar. Then I won’t have to strangle her when we get home.” Cordelia was lying on a couch, one arm flung dramatically over her face. Drou had come downstairs to help herself to leftovers, and kept nibbling on a cracker with caviar, without comment. “I am never going to a tea party again; I don’t care if the black plague comes to Barrayar.”

“Captain Illyan is going to be insufferable,” Drou agreed. “I can see his I-told-you-so face now.”

“Ugh,” said Cordelia. “Y’know, Drou, back when Miles was born, and you told me you half-hoped you were pregnant, because you thought Kou would be happy with you . . . I didn’t really get it. But I’ve been doing some reading. Did you know that seven out of ten babies born in Hassadar District Hospital last year were boys?”

“I didn’t,” said Drou. “But I guess it makes sense.”

“Sense! I mean, the statistics are probably better in the backcountry, where they don’t have babies in hospitals; they’re not buying the latest pharmaceuticals either. But even so. If you have girls, Drou, I bet every one of your grandchildren will be born with a ‘vor’ in front of their surname.”

Drou shook her head. Cordelia might be right--she seemed to understand some things about Barrayar better than Barrayarans did. And some things she didn’t understand at all.

But Drou had a sudden, involuntary picture--a baby girl, with blue eyes and sparse blonde hair. Kou’s. And hers.

“Maybe,” said Drou.

**Author's Note:**

> [Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding](http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674060326) is a book by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. I thought about it a lot when I was writing about Drou's role in Gregor's childhood.


End file.
